Art Projects International is pleased to present Unknown Territory - New Work: IL LEE · POURAN JINCHI · FILIPE ROCHA DA SILVA. The artists’ most recent works are on view. Viewers new to these artists and those long familiar, alike, will appreciate Lee’s use of new materials; Jinchi’s increasingly detailed focus on the form of language as subject matter; and the broad scope of da Silva’s refined and multi-referential drawings.

IL LEE offers the negative of his well-known ballpoint pen works–here a dark ground of oil stick and paint on canvas is rendered white by scraping lines into the surface with an ink-less pen. The confidently looping lines create light effects suggestive of occurrences just over the horizon. The sense of illumination leads the viewer to anticipate the manifestation of the ephemeral. The anticipation remains as the subtle reality of the works’ materiality and formal integrity announce themselves.

POURAN JINCHI in her Tajvid works presents faithful representation of the pronunciation marks and the Sura and Aya (Chapter and Verse) markers from pages of different Qorans. What she leaves out is the text itself. In keeping with the Qoran as the word of God, Tajvid refers to the proper pronunciation, phrasing and attitude in reading holy words. The diacritical marks Jinchi has rendered are not used in everyday Arabic writing where they would be extraneous–but their use in the Qoran is critical in helping the reader precisely emulate the sound of divine speech. In Jinchi’s paintings, though, the words are gone; what was an indicator of the way to holiness now becomes a code without a subject. Jinchi further emphasizes the formal beauty of the disembodied communication by keying each painting to a color: blue, green, yellow.

FILIPE ROCHA DA SILVA draws thousands of tiny figures in rendered expanses. The figures are simultaneously human and calligraphic markings standing in for the human. From a distance the forms in the works solidify into modernist shapes–a stylized mound, a grid of colors. With da Silva’s large works on paper the very act of using a distinctly human shape as a universal mark has an unexpected humanizing action–the simple symbol retains the nobility of its origin. The figures are drawn as if seen from above, suggesting the viewer can omnisciently survey vast arenas. Ultimately, the viewer discovers the very small units create sophisticated, multifarious harmonies of substantial size and is reminded, perhaps, of chaos and set theory and, in kind, of the nearly incomprehensible complexity of any individual’s relationships to self, society, and being.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

IL LEE was born in Seoul, Korea and lives and works in New York. Upcoming and Recent Exhibitions include: IL LEE, Gebert Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM (2009); IL LEE, The Vilcek Foundation, New York (2008); Il Lee: Ballpoint Drawings, Queens Museum of Art, New York (2007); Il Lee: Ballpoint Abstractions, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA (2007); Il Lee: Ballpoint Works 1980-2006, Art Projects International, New York (2007); Paris/New York: Il Lee, Galerie Gana-Beaugourg, Paris, France (2005); and Open House, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY (2004). Selected Bibliography: Clarkson, Lamar. “A Few Good Pens,” ARTnews, New York, September 2007; “Il Lee,” The New Yorker, New York, August 13, 2007; Genocchio, Benjamin. “To See the World in Ballpoint Pen,” The New York Times, New York, August 10, 2007; Baker, Kenneth. “Ballpoint Abstractions in San Jose,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, July 7, 2007; Leffingwell, Edward. “Il Lee at Art Projects International,” Art in America, New York, October 2006; Wei, Lilly. “Beyond the Minimal,” Art in Culture, Seoul, vol. 7, no. 4, April 2006. Selected Collections: San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Kwachon, Korea; and the Total Museum, Seoul, Korea.